movie
This movie is about 47 seconds long and it uses 3.7 MB. This video shows
two people being interviewed by a local Tv station in Perú. One of the
interviewed is a local resident and the other is a govermental offical.
The movie is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Not many people were present at the time of the tsunami. The ports where the waves hit the hardest were closed on February 21st due to high wave conditions. Many of the people interviewed said that they did not feel the temblor. Also many of the eyewitnesses could not recall the event clearly. Some people said that they saw three waves, others only one. For some people the waves were black and dirty, for others the waves looked white and were accompanied by hissing sound. Many of the residents do not have a watch so the time when the waves hit land and the time between the waves are also very distorted.
Due to the saturation of the tide gauges at the Port of Chimbote, the
elevation of the ocean was not registered correctly, and most of the data
was obtained through interviewing the eyewitnesses.
One person interviewed by a member of the International team was Gonzalo Cruz Salinas. He was at Los Chimus beach in Bahia Los Chimus, about 30 Km south of Chimbote. On the morning that the team was assessing the damage, Gonzalo was on the beach helping fixing boats that had been torn apart by the tsunami. Gonzalo did not feet the temblor, but he said that some people did. "The "maretazo" came about 9:30 a.m., the water went out to where the boats are now", Gonzalo explained. He ran up to "losa deportiva" (a concrete soccer field). "The water did not reach that high, though it came through low spots and went all the way to the town plaza".